Now Face to Face (77 page)

“Tony and I were just talking of the wedding. I wish that I might have been there. I’ve brought you a wedding gift from Virginia, but I wish I might have seen you married. I’m going to walk on the lawn for a while. Tony says he is too tired. Will you walk with me, Harriet?”

“Yes.”

Tony watched his wife and Barbara make their way down the grassy steps, arm in arm. She had told him Walpole betrayed her. She wanted his help in somehow avenging that. Walpole had done what he could, Tony argued. The trouble was the circumstances, not Walpole. Tony felt as if nothing made sense, as if all were out of balance. The emotion in him was so strong. I ache inside, he thought. For what? For them both. I wish I could have them both.

“Temptation.”

Tony turned. Charles had come out to the terrace again and stood beside Tony, watching the two women walk down the steps.

“Temptation separates the saints from the sinners, Tony. We are all of us saints until tempted. Then—well, then is another story. It was easier when she was in Virginia, wasn’t it? Duty, I mean; honor; the keeping of vows. Welcome to the world, pilgrim.”

I would like to strike him, thought Tony, there above the nose, not once, but twice. Blood would gush out everywhere. I would like that. But he said, in even tones, “Good night, Charles.”

Inside the library, Tony saw that Diana was alone. There was a forlorn expression on her face. “Play me a hand of cards,” she said to him; then, very quietly, “Please.”

Not knowing why, he sat down.

“I
ADORE
this place,” Barbara said to Harriet. She stopped every so often to take in a deep breath, as if she must breathe Tamworth, its moonlight, to her soul. “It is as if my heart resides here. Listen to me: My mother wanted me to marry Tony, wanted me to be duchess. She will do and say anything to hurt you because of that. You have three choices with her: Play her game—and I warn you, she is ruthless; hide when you see her; or ignore her. Jealousy is an awful thing, isn’t it? I know. I was so jealous of Roger and his lover I thought I would die from it. I did a hundred things to make him love me, and now I don’t know if you can make someone love. They do, or they don’t. Marriage seems to agree with Tony. I like what I saw tonight.”

“And what was that?”

“Regard in his eyes when you spoke. Respect. He seems more a man, somehow. I won’t take Tony from you.”

“Perhaps you can’t.”

Barbara laughed. “Marvelous! I have no doubt he is yours…. Virginia was an interesting experience for me, Harriet. It was wonderful and awful at the same time. I made a dear, dear friend, one I will have with me always, and I learned what I wanted there among the river and trees—trees so huge, Harriet, that three men could not encircle their trunks.”

“And what is it you want?”

“To live a life of honor, as I have not always done before. To hurt no one and to try to see that no one hurts me. You might let the Princess of Wales know that—that I do not wish to hurt anyone. I’m going on alone now. I may well walk for hours. Sleep well, cousin.”

In the moonlight, the two women separated, no parting kiss between them. Barbara walked on toward Ladybeth Farm, and Harriet went back toward the house, a dark bulk in the night, with candles in some of the windows, in the window of the bedchamber she and Tony shared. He was still awake. Thinking about Barbara, no doubt, thought Harriet. On the late-night journey back from Lady Mary’s fête, Tony and Charles had both sat like two lumps, not a word from them about the fact that the woman they both loved had just reappeared in their lives. The next morning, Lindenmas was a hive turned to one side, and Barbara was its buzz. Mary came into Harriet’s bedchamber to cry and say that Charles would take Barbara as his mistress again, that she just knew it. Harriet’s mother and her sisters came to her, separately, but in essence saying the same thing: Poor Harriet, they said, what will you do now? And in their pity, Harriet had seen a kind of perverse satisfaction. Why? Because she and Tony might be happy, or had been happy. What a sad, narrow little world, in which one begrudged any other person happiness, no matter how slight. She’s back, Wart had said to Harriet. Let’s you and I elope, leave England together and shock our friends. What had the Duchess said at the wedding? Something about the greatest love flying out the window without truth, duty, and honor to anchor it down.

She and Tony had not started with greatest love—or any love, for that matter. Theirs was a mating of families, of land and pride, as were most marriages between people of their station. But Tony was unexpectedly kind, and she liked that grave smile of his. There was passion between them when they lay together, a passion that surprised her. She found that she increasingly liked him; it was an unexpected gift, that liking, something to build more upon. She’d known when she married him that he loved someone else. She understood quite clearly that love between husband and wife was not a duty of this marriage. So it really wasn’t fair to be angry at him now that the someone else he did love had reappeared. The time to be angry might come later, depending on his behavior. Would he humiliate her by openly courting Barbara? Would he grow cold and rude, the way Charles had, despising Mary’s least gesture, so bored by marriage that he could not be still? Would he be quiet and hidden about his passion, leaving her to imagine anything and everything and then be told what was happening, as surely she would be, by others?

She’d wait to feel anger. She’d see what happened, how he behaved. If he remains a friend to me, then I will be a friend to him, she thought, and felt better immediately. It would be interesting, she thought, stepping up onto the terrace, to see if Barbara was a woman of her word. So many things were said of Barbara. Which of them was true?

U
P ABOVE
the porch at Tamworth’s front entrance, a candle showed in the window.

“Walking across toward Ladybeth,” Annie, at the window, reported to the Duchess.

“Alone?”

“Alone. Her Grace has returned to the house.”

Leaning back into her pillows, the Duchess looked up at the canopy over her head. The big, four-poster bed she lay in had been her mother’s. Her grandmother’s mother had embroidered the curious, fanciful pattern of flowers and birds that decorated the bed curtains, something done all those years ago that had lasted. There was a continuity to it, a rightness in this passage, from mother to daughter and on. The woman who had bent over her needle, to push the brightly colored silk threads, crimson, yellow, green, gold and silver gilt, to push the heavy purl made of twisted gold and silver wires, in and out, in and out, was long gone. What patience it had taken. What time. But the woman had persisted. She was dead now, but not her work, which lasted past lifetimes.

Barbara was likely to have a position at court. It was heady news. What influence she might wield. The Duchess thought of her own years at court, of her own rank and power, her deceits and machinations, the twists and turns. She had loved every moment of it, until Richard broke from it all. Richard, her fair Richard. You killed him, Louisa had said, you and your ambitions. She stared over at the portrait above the fireplace, not even knowing a tear was rolling down her face, until Dulcinea touched it with her paw. Had Walpole betrayed friendship, betrayed honor for expediency, as Barbara said?

She ought to know; she of all people should recognize betrayal. She had forced Richard to do what he had not believed in. He would have followed King James across the sea into exile, but she wouldn’t allow it, told him he must choose between James and her. Richard had believed in his heart that James II was the true, the rightful king of England. That was what had destroyed his mind, in the end; he saw his sons’ deaths as punishment, he told her, for his sin.

Richard, most honorable of men, she thought, what possible sin could God have punished you for, save the one of loving me too much? Regrets, regrets, life was filled with them. Of them all, this was the one she found impossible to bear, this was the one she must keep buried. She was too old to face it. She sniffed, and with all the will she was capable of, and it was much, pushed her mind to another place, so that Richard and James and herself in those old days might never have been.

Thank God Tony is married, she thought. The marriage likely wouldn’t dissolve before there was an heir. She could only hope he and Barbara didn’t break Harriet’s heart, but if they did, well, it was not her trouble, was it? That was what she’d known downstairs, that she was too old to make it all right again, to send Tony one way and Barbara another, as she’d once done. Life could be cruel. She’d done her duty. No more could be asked. The family was preserved.

W
HEN
B
ARBARA
returned from Ladybeth Farm and walked into her bedchamber, candles were burning, and flowers were everywhere—thistles, dandelions, dog daisies, rose-a-rubies, convolvuses, and bearbine. Shades of white, silver, crimson, blush—shy, difficult flowers, half weed. Mixed in among them were water flags and mint.

She picked up a candlestick and went upstairs. Knocking softly, she walked into Bathsheba’s tiny chamber. Bathsheba was awake. She knew I’d come, thought Barbara.

“Thank you for the flowers.”

Bathsheba didn’t answer.

“There is a dog at Ladybeth. Have you seen it?”

A look of intense relief came over the woman’s face. “Yes. Danger.” Barbara nodded and left.

She walked into her grandmother’s bedchamber, set the candle on the bedside table, and shook the Duchess awake.

“Richard, we’ll do as you say, we’ll leave court and follow King James—”

“It’s me, Grandmama.”

“Who?”

Barbara tried not to be impatient. Sometimes her grandmother’s mind drifted. It always came back. “Barbara, Grandmama. Roger is dead, and I went to Virginia and now I am returned.”

“I was dreaming, a lovely dream of your grandfather. When did Roger die? Never mind. You know how my mind does, Bab, I can’t quite remember, but I will. What’s happened? Has Abigail killed your mother?”

“Grandmama, when was the last time you were at Ladybeth?”

The Duchess pursed her lips, a sign of stubbornness Barbara knew well. “Sir John and I have quarreled.”

“He has the sweetest little dog with him, Grandmama. A tiny dog, with spots on it. Its leg has been hurt, however, and it limps. Yes,” said Barbara, as comprehension came into her grandmother’s face. She might not remember when Roger had died, but she well understood this. “The Bishop of Rochester is implicated in treason by reference in letters to the gift of a little spotted dog. Or so the rumors say.”

John’s a Jacobite, thought the Duchess. Certainty went flooding through her. I should have known. Sweet bloody hands of Jesus Christ our Savior. Like pieces of a wooden puzzle, certain things, certain events slid into place, made sense. Gussy was clerk to Rochester. It all fit.

“A new pet? I asked him. ‘I keep it for a friend,’ he said. I told him the rumor, Grandmama. He hadn’t heard it. ‘I’ve been staying close to Ladybeth,’ he said, and though he tried to hide it, I could see he was upset. What do you suppose he’s done?”

“There is no telling. Bathsheba mentioned strangers coming at night. He’s been collecting coins, most likely, to finance the invasion—”

“And weapons. I would bet there are weapons hidden all over Ladybeth.”

“He’s in it up to his neck. He does nothing halfway. Oh, Barbara.”

“I’m going to walk back over there tomorrow. I’m going to take the dog away, Grandmama. Where will we hide it?”

Oh, thank God Barbara was here. Treason was so slippery within the bowels of their own family that John’s didn’t shock her. Barbara had nerves of steel. She always had, even as a girl. It had been she who arranged the details of her father’s burial in Italy; Harry had been too distraught to do it.

“In the chapel vault.”

“Good, yes, that’s good. Oh, Grandmama, the flesh on my arms is prickling. I feel afraid for Sir John, for us all.” Gussy’s in it, thought Barbara. I know it. Jane, what is your part?

She crawled up in the bed beside her grandmother, just as she’d used to do when she was a girl and needed comfort. At the foot of her bed was the book on Virginia, which now seemed far away and long ago, another world from this one.

Chapter Forty-five